AV News 196 - May 2014
Movement of a layer automatically moves the video clips in direct positional
relationship.
When video clips are opened or imported they automatically meet end to end
with no gaps. Editing the length of a video clip is simple, click on the end of a
clip with the mouse and drag along
the timeline. Dragging the left end
towards the right will remove frames
from the beginning of the clip, and
dragging the right end towards the
left will remove frames from the end
of the clip. Gaps between clips are
automatically
removed
after
shortening any clip. Obviously
where one clip ends and another
begins a sudden change of video
would appear. To overcome this
issue a selection of fades or cross
fades are available, and as you
might expect these are very simple
to apply. A left mouse click on the
'Fade' icon located next to the 'scissors' top right of the 'Timeline Control Panel'
opens up a menu with a choice of five different fades. To apply click and drag
a fade to an end of the video clip. This
could be at the beginning or end to fade
in or out using black, white, or a colour,
or a simple fade or cross fade between
two clips. Changing the duration of a
fade can be achieved either by altering
the numerical value in the menu box, or
by clicking and dragging the actual fade
on the clip ends. In our example image
the selected fade is highlighted in blue.
By tapping the space bar a movie preview of your video including all fades
and effects can be started or stopped.
The movie pre-view can also be
controlled by using the arrows at the top
left of the timeline control panel, these
will be recognised as standard symbols
used throughout most similar software
and originating from the early days of
cassette tape recorders. Keyframes
can be inserted to control effects such
as 'Position', 'Opacity', 'Style' and 'Transform' in much the same way as other
popular video editing software. If you own CS5 or CS6 Extended versions and
haven't yet tried the video editing facilities you could be pleasantly surprised.
More about video in a later issue.
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